Putting the Customer at the Heart Sutherland Shire Council through Co-Creation and CX Research

“I have been incredibly impressed throughout the journey. Your support, knowledge and attentiveness (as well as the entire team from TSG) has been undeniable. I had a vision and approach in mind at the beginning – being a highly-collaborative, co-design process to ensure maximum impact and buy-in. I am absolutely confident that we have achieved this. – Ben Richardson, Team Leader Customer Strategy

Challenge

As customer expectations continually evolve, it has become increasingly important for Local Government Councils to evolve and adapt to meet the changing needs of customers and the community. With a growing populous, shifting economic environment and leaps in technology, Sutherland Shire Council (SSC) wanted to ensure it could deliver positive experiences that meet customer expectations now and into the future. In 2023, SSC launched a new project to develop a bold vision, a customer experience (CX) strategy and an implementation roadmap aspart of its commitment to the Sutherland Shire community. The Strategy Group partnered with Sutherland Shire Council to support the organisation inits transformational journey to put the customer at the heart of the organisation.

Approach

Putting the customer at the centre of the organisation with a focus on co-creation and robust CX research

The project involved assessing and understanding the current state CX in terms of the Council’s capabilities and culture to deliver an exceptional CX from both an internal and external perspective. The scope of the first project phase was to co-create a vision for the Council’s future-state CX and conduct qualitative and quantitative research with Council staff and customers to achieve the following objectives:

• Develop a bold CX Vision and guiding principles
• Gain a holistic view of Council’s CX capabilities and maturity, and assess the main gaps to close
• Deliver a robust report and framework to inform the CX strategy and roadmap

Outcomes

Creating a holistic view of the current state CX and laying a strong foundation for the Council to develop a CX strategy and roadmap

The outcomes of the staff and customer research and co-design sessions with key SSC stakeholders culminated in a final report that included several key outcomes to inform the development of a robust CX strategy and roadmap. The outcomes included:

• CX vision and guiding principles: Co-created by The Strategy Group and SSC leaders and endorsed and confirmed by SSC staff and customers research, the CX Vision and principles set the foundation for the ideal state and how Council gets there
• Baseline CX measures: Through the research, several baseline CX measures were established for the Council to monitor, track and improve over time. These measures included staff and customer sentiment regarding key CX capabilities and clearly outlined the gaps to close
• CX Maturity Benchmark: The Strategy Group employed its proprietary CX Maturity Assessment to benchmark Council’s ability to deliver an exceptional CX and its customer-centricity as an organisation to highlight strengths and weaknesses
• Insights and Gaps to Close: The key research insights were distilled into clear gaps for Council to close in its CX strategy and to achieve its CX Vision